Look Out!

It's true: you can get hurt from golf, but it's hard to get hurt from knitting. According to this recent article in Sports Illustrated (of all weird places) your failure to yell "Fore" can result in serious injury to your fellow golfers and, if you're a rich guy, serious injury to your bank account. But not if you live in Hawaii.

I have some coordination problems to overcome before I can integrate yelling "fore!" into my game. First is the problem where I chew my lower lip when I hit the ball. I bite down so hard sometimes it's hard to talk after a shot, particularly a good shot. A warning sound might come out as FLOOR! which might cause unnecessary looking around. Plus I am not a public yeller.

I like to do my yelling at work.

Plus I think I'm more of a threat to the people in my immediate 10 foot vincity. In reporting on golf ball injuries, Golf Digest reported that scientists from the Institute for Preventative Sports Medicine used a crash-test dummy and a machine that shoots golf balls to replicate real-life beaning scenarios outdoors.

Those tests showed that an 85-m.p.h. shot to your forehead from 50 yards away will cause a nasty bruise, but has only a 1 percent chance of causing a life-threatening injury. Now, it's rare that I hit the ball more than 30 yards at a time and I am sure not whacking it at 85 miles per hour. The article also said the testers shot balls at a dummy' temple in a lab. They discovered that the temple is by far the most dangerous place to get hit-- the bones are thin there, and you can get a severe injury plus break your glasses.

Even if this has convinced you that you should practise yelling Fore! in the shower in the morning, it's worth your time to check out these excellent animated movies about Safety and golf etiquitte. Particularly the one on Divot Repair - which Brendan thinks counts as gardening - the animatrix looks like she's tearing up the course with a shovel and means it.